


Reminiscence and the Birth of A Future

by Aetherrryn



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Light Angst, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 18:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21324607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aetherrryn/pseuds/Aetherrryn
Summary: This was their redemption.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Edelgard von Hresvelg
Comments: 29
Kudos: 111





	Reminiscence and the Birth of A Future

**Author's Note:**

> Is she ever going to stop posting DImigard, they may ask. Well, I am fueled by the cries of the toxic assholes that don't want others to enjoy life, so no. I'm not. I've got to feed the starving dimied stans and myself so here we go with another fic. I've fill up the whole fucking tag myself if I need to. 
> 
> They'll never escape me; they'll never escape Dimigard and I will forever relish in their ceaseless shrieking

The king paced back and forth. 

He had received no rest, and would receive none until this ordeal had passed. 

He paced back and forth, fraught with unease and trepidation. Because for hours, hours it seemed, he had been listening. Listening to the harrowing wails that echoed through the hall, the agonized cries that swelled from behind the door. 

How long had it been now since it had begun? It was mid the night that he had woken to her desperate plea, her fingers curled tightly around his arm. It was in the darkness that she had fearfully declared that the time had arrived. 

Now the sun had woken and spread its rays across the frosted land. Now day had risen and still the sound of her weeping lingered. 

Neither was he permitted to see her. He could not aid her through this suffering—he had been shoved from the room once it had become apparent that his grip was strong enough to have broken her hand. Thus he had not seen her since then—and that had been before the light of day had broken through the panes of the windows. 

He waved away every offer—sustenance, drink, even requests that he return to his bed and find the slumber robbed him. How could he sleep whilst his wife’s pained screams rang through his skull? 

The lack of rest daunted him not; it was nothing new. But this…the rest of this was. 

The king ceased his listless motion and turned to the door. She had grown quieter, but still he heard the soft groans and hiccoughed sobs. She did not easily give voice to her pain, and so he knew then that the pain must be beyond imaginable. 

They had long since deemed the task of drawing him away fruitless and he had been left to pace in solitude. A few times had a serving girl scurried to and fro with fresh cloths—but no one else had dared come to disturb him now. 

The work awaiting his hand remained forgotten in disheveled piles atop his desk. It was inconsequential in the face of this occurrence. 

The king closed his eye and heaved a breath. A great fear swelled in his chest, and worry. All the doubts that had lingered in his head since the cessation of the great war rose again to the forefront of his mind. A festering, open wound. 

The empire had been given him, the alliance dissolved and swallowed by the Kingdom. The continent had been forced upon his shoulders, and fixing a war-torn land had been no simple task. 

Neither had it been simple to mend the fractures of his bond with his wife. The former emperor had surrendered, and she had been kept as a prisoner for a time, though treated kindly. The proud woman had not spoken for months following her defeat, and she did not smile until a year had passed. Even then, it was a hollow facsimile of a smile—the same one that he bore. 

How could they find the strength to smile when the wounds were still so fresh? 

But time dragged along, and the wounds became scars. The woman had accepted his hand and the title of queen consort of the holy kingdom of Faerghus. 

She had been his wife for years now, and still the history remained a point of tension between them—for both. He had killed her loyal vassal, and his own friends had fallen to the swords of her command. She had, for a time, gone stiff when he moved to embrace her. And he, he still dreamed of meeting her upon the field. He dreamed that she fell beneath the point of his lance.

And he woke, lathered in cold sweat, almost tempted to give in to the madness of his past. But she rose with him and murmured gentle words and coaxed him to remember their love. 

Because they did; they did love each other. He had sworn his undying adoration at the altar, and she had done the same. But love was not flawless, and certainly not when it was stained with five years’ worth of reckless, blind hate. 

And now, he paced outside the chamber in which she lay, dwelling on the uncertainties that still plagued him. Those of the future as well. 

Until the day that she had collapsed to her knees and tearfully confessed that she was carrying their child, he had not once thought of the possibility. That he would sire children; that he would call himself a father. They had not once discussed it, perhaps neither had wished to curse their offspring with their own hurts. Such broken people as they were, what right had they to bring innocence into the land they had watered with blood. 

And now he paced outside the chamber in which his wife labored to bring their child into their world. He was filled with fear.

Once more, a startling cry streamed from behind the door, barely muffled, and everything within him seemed to have tightened. He felt like a taut string simply waiting to be snapped. 

Yet, within moments, the wail faltered, and another cry replaced it. The cry of an infant. 

The king remained still, his gaze locked in place. 

Slowly, the door heaved open and a woman, with a soft, tired smile, beckoned him inside. 

He walked as though lost in a daze, as though the chamber that he was well familiar with had become a foreign land. His breath seemed frozen in his lungs.   
The man staggered to the bedside, fearfully roving his gaze over the frail woman lying still. For a moment, the terror surged through his heart—that she had passed. But her eyes fluttered open and a faint smile curled her lips. A hand rose limply and he caught it, keeping her gaze.

Her white hair remained sprawled behind her; silver strands stuck to her face, drenched in the sweat of her labor. He did not heed the bloody rags littered across the room, but looked only at her. He ran his thumb over her knuckles, hardly daring to breathe.

“El.”

He managed to whisper, watching her eyes fall shut again. 

A quiet voice stole his attention and the king turned his head. There stood a woman, a bundle of cloth in her arm. The woman stepped closer and offered him the swaddled cloth, and only then did he see. His child.

His son.

He cradled the sleeping infant as gently as he could, carefully pulling away the fabric to look closer. With a glance back, he found that his wife had pushed herself up, leaning heavily against the headboard, her lilac eyes focused on their child. And yet, her gaze was drawn away—as something was pressed into her arms.

She raised her eyes and looked at him, and she smiled. She smiled, beautifully, earnestly—a joy lit her countenance that he had not seen for years. 

The king crept to her side and peered at the similar bundle in her arms—and a surge of incomprehensible astonishment burst through his chest. 

“You look like a fool.” The woman chuckled lamely, gently tracing a finger down the second child’s cheek—and the infant cooed quietly. “Close your mouth.” She chided softly, her smile only growing.

The jests faded in his ears as he looked from one to the other—his children. His sons. 

“Dimitri.” Her voice grew quieter. The woman nodded to her side, beckoning him closer. And he obeyed, carefully lifting himself atop the bed, settling into her side. The infant in his arms slept soundly, making not a sound. He felt her lean against him heavily, heard her weighted sigh, felt her head fall to his shoulder. 

His breath caught in his throat.

His eye stung. 

The fear in his heart vanished like a morning mist. There was nothing left. Nothing but love. 

He raised his hand and covered his face, hiding the tears that had begun to trickle down his cheek. He could not swallow the sound that tore its way from his throat.   
The king held his son and wept.

Seven years ago, he had been lost, imprisoned within the confines of his mad lust for retribution. He had been ready to throw away his life, to take her life with him. There had been no meaning to his accursed existence.

Yet, this life—these lives, so small, barely having taken their first breaths, were innocent. Clean. And he—the broken man that he was, had helped bring them into existence. 

They both had. 

This was their hope; their future. Their atonement. Their legacy. And there seemed nothing more beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> I would give my soul to be able to draw; I'd draw the fuck out of them. 
> 
> Anyway, I just needed some more family time, and this time featuring new father Dimitri. 
> 
> Jesus, Nintendo, Intelligent Systems; just give me this ending as an option; I will literally just give you my wallet.


End file.
